The Original ‘Breaking Bad’ Ending Was More Of A Bloodbath Than The Actual Finale

With no due respect to House, the final season of Breaking Bad can be summed up in two words: everybody dies. That’s not technically true — Pinkman need for speeded away, there’s still a Walt (Jr.) in Skyler’s life, Huell hasn’t left his hotel room in nine years — but it might as well be, considering the body count in the finale, let alone the 15 episodes preceding it. But according to creator Vince Gilligan, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the original death tally was A LOT higher.

You opted to kill Walt, definitively closing the door on his story. But you left it open for Saul (Bob Odenkirk) by letting him live. At the time, you knew there was going to be a Saul spin-off. When you guys were deciding the fates of Saul and others, were you thinking about the spin-off?

That’s a good question, and on the face of it, it would certainly read like we were being strategic in our thinking, if not mercenary, to ensure that Saul Goodman stayed alive because we had already talked publicly about our desire to do a Better Call Saul spin-off. Having said that, in those final months and weeks of breaking the end of the Breaking Bad story, anything and everything was fair game and open for discussion. We talked a great many times about killing off Saul and we were open to it. We would have done whatever it took to come up with the best, most satisfying ending to Breaking Bad, including killing off Saul. But the more we talked about it, the more we thought, “You know, we don’t necessarily want the end of this series to be a bloodbath.” At one point, we talked about killing off every major character, and one particularly dark week along the way we talked about killing everybody — having some sort of Wild Bunch bloodbath of an ending. But you live with those ideas for a while and you think, “What do we need to kill all these characters for?” Just because an ending is dramatic or perhaps overly dramatic does not ensure that it will be satisfying.” We thought to ourselves, “Let’s just go with what feels right to us.” And there’s no mathematics to this. You just have to feel your way through it blindly and go with your gut, and that’s what we did. And in the case of Saul, we thought to ourselves, “Saul Goodman is kind of like a cockroach, in the sense that he’s probably going to survive all nuclear wars and he’ll still be out there somewhere after mankind has become extinct. He’s a survivor and therefore it’d be weird if he didn’t survive. Walter White, on the other hand, got a death sentence in the first act of the very first episode. It would be less than satisfying perhaps if he didn’t die at the end of the whole thing.”

The only think I didn’t like about the ending to Breaking Bad was that it felt more like the end to that particular story (with the White Supremacists) than an end to the entire series and the series story arc as a whole. If that last episode ended with Walter staying alive it would have made just as much sense. It really should have been a showdown between Hank and Walter. Ending it like it began. Or if Gus was never murdered, it would have been more satisfying if Walt’s death was at Gus’s hands.

Still, greatest show ever, just not sure I want my “hero” killed off by some minor/recently introduced character(s).

Back when the ending aired, I was completely against the neo-nazi line, feeling like the showdown with Hank was infinitely more appropriate. Someone mentioned that the episode Ozymandius (where Hank gets killed) is the climax, and Granite State and Felina are the “epilogue” episodes.

I hated that explanation because it didn’t improve the endings at all in my eyes. Stupid neo-nazis.

I don’t think HOW Walter died is important at all. He was given a death sentence in the first episode, that is the point of the series. He is moving toward death no matter what, making the “best” or most impactful of the time he has left. He could have died from a stubbed toe, and wouldn’t have mattered to me. But I do feel like the finale was a bit of a letdown, just because the rest of the series is so brilliantly crafted, and the finale felt a little paint by numbers.

The neo nazis are not such a central focus in the end. They are there yes, but only to be the bad guys.

The end is how Walt cant go back to his family, that ship has sailed. Its over he got back in the game and never looked back. That is what changed everything, he was hunted down by Hank and his family has been put into the spotlight. He ruined it all, the neo nazis are just a small piece in the puzzle. It could have been anyone, the main characters still would have ended the same.

Jesse and Walt have their conclusion that might be more tied into the nazis but really everything else happened because of Walt.

If Felina is an epilogue then the main character we followed for five years dies as an afterthought.

Like I said, still the best drama ever on television but the end was anticlimactic to me. Ip if someone just started watching the show halfway through the last season the last episode still made perfect sense. And that kinda bothered me.

It’s like if Han Solo was killed off by random Stormtrooper #31 after three movies.